England’s Historic Seascapes Programme 2004-2008

England’s Historic Seascapes Pilot Project areas, the current HSC demonstration project area and HLC programme coverage. © English Heritage The 'England’s Historic Seascapes Programme' was designed to develop a robust methodology for Historic Seascape Characterisation (HSC) that would be applicable nationally to England’s coasts and adjacent seas. In doing so, it complemented and extended the principles of English Heritage's national programme of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC).

The extension of HLC principles to coastal and marine contexts required much innovative work and novel approaches to accommodate our seas' far greater three-dimensionality in historic processes, their translations into material expressions and the differing basis for their landscape perceptions. Further complications arise from the lack of comprehensive mapped fixed boundaries so familiar on land.
Various options to meet these and other challenges were trialled by the Programme's pilot projects across a range of circumstances encountered off England’s coasts. 

With an immediate practical aim of providing a better-informed framework for management responses to marine mineral aggregates extraction now and in the future, funding for the Programme has come from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF).
 

England’s Historic Seascapes, Liverpool Bay Pilot Project Report Cover. 

With an immediate practical aim of providing a better-informed framework for management responses to marine mineral aggregates extraction now and in the future, funding for the Programme has come from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF).

Round 1, Oct. 2004-March 2006, to 12 nautical mile limit of the UK Territorial Sea:

• Liverpool Bay and waters off the Fylde (Wessex Archaeology)

Round 2, March 2006-March 2007, to the limit of UK Controlled Waters:

• 
  The Solent and waters off the Isle of Wight (Bournemouth University, Southampton University and Hants & Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology)
• Southwold to Clacton (Oxford Archaeology)
• Withernsea to Skegness (Museum of London Archaeology Service)
• Scarborough to Hartlepool (Cornwall Historic Environment Service)
  

National HSC Method Statement cover page. © English Heritage & Cornwall HES HSC Method Consolidation. Sept 2007-March 2008
The family of methodologies resulting from the pilot projects underwent detailed review and assessment in a method consolidation project by Cornwall Historic Environment Service. This project identified the most effective combination of approaches and techniques, testing and further refining their functionality in combination and bringing them together to form a National HSC Method, marking the culmination of the Programme. The Method Statement detailing the National HSC Method, along with a range of resources from the pilot projects, is publicly available on the Archaeological Data Service website at:  http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/alsf/seascapes.cfm

The National HSC Method will be implemented around England's coasts and seas in coming years through a series of projects contributing to a national HSC database.